Some of my Facebook friends seemed blown away by Castlevania. I didn't think it was very good.

The character designs and animation ape anime. One of the hallmarks of anime is using animation economically to complement storytelling. You can really tell where the animation budget was spent from scene to scene, but you can't really tell why. You'll suddenly see a more detailed shot of Trevor Belmont grimacing, but there will be two other shots of a less detailed grimace from Trevor, and no apparent reason for the difference.

The plot is so thin it could slice soup. The bishop of Gresit burns Dracula's wife at the stake for witchcraft, and Dracula swears bloody vengeance. That's good! But when it comes time for said bloody vengeance, what do we get? A walking "who cares" barely-a-sketch-of-a-character Trevor Belmont rolls through, seemingly completely disinterested in anything that's going on until he gets the weakest, shallowest pep talk from the magical Jew stand-ins. What the fuck? I know it's only four episodes, but I expected something interesting to happen. Telegraphing a team-up with Alucard doesn't count.

There are the seeds of interesting ideas here, like Dracula being a man of science who feels he has transcended humanity (typical Ellis stuff), but the execution sucks. When Alucard confronted Dracula about his planned genocide, Dracula was all like WHAT DO I NEED HUMANS FOR? And I'm sitting there like you're a fucking vampire, how about you need humans for subsistence? Who's minding the store here?

^I've never really watched anime, so my experience with adult cartoons is limited mostly to The Simpsons, Futurama, and South Park. And maybe a few episodes of Aeon Flux (and come to think of it, I vaguely remember Aeon Flux being animated in a similar fashion) so I didn't really get a chance to take in all of the details of the animation.

To me the plot is about as thin as those of the video games, so I'm ok with a weak plot, I'm just hoping we get more character development down the road. And weren't there some iterations of the game where Dracula was a man of science?

For a second I thought those hell-hounds were going to turn the bishop into (Faust?) Dracula's evil priest from Symphony of the Night.

I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it enough. Fairly quick paced with some cool action. I didn't realize it was only 4 episodes though. It felt like it was just starting to get more interesting and I was looking forward to more then it was over.

Didn't suck, didn't blow me away. I'll keep watching cause I have an affinity for the games from my youth. Already renewed for a 2nd season (but based upon where they left off, I guess they already knew / assumed).

Pretty good, but it always annoys me a bit when fantasy series portrays a world where magic and demons but the church is still the same as they are in our world and thus totally unprepared to deal with any kind of supernatural.

If there was actually magic and demons and shit the church would be in on the ground floor.

Similarly, I have major gripes for any entertainment that just uses "church" as the flat-character villain-type. This is just lazy. Make the organization more complex. You can still have them instigate the plot via bad actions without making all members *literal* weapon-wielding ninjas looking to murder anyone who isn't part of their organization.

^^, ^Christianity has been preparing for Jesus' return for 2000 years. If it happened today, you think the church would be prepared to handle it? They've been on the ground for since he died. Doesn't mean that it wouldn't take them by surprise.